How to Upgrade Your Mindset | John Assaraf

When you believe it, when you feel it, when you act that way, when you talk that way, when you do the things necessary to achieve those goals. And that takes practice and drilling and rehearsing and fucking up so many times you want to quit over and over and over and over again. Because when you're transforming from what you are to what you're going to be, It's freaking uncomfortable.

In this video, I will be interviewing John Assaraf, a guy who went from humble beginnings as a disruptive teenager to a wildly successful serial entrepreneur who has truly created the life of his dreams. My goal with this video is to inspire you to go after your dreams because they truly are possible. Enjoy the show. Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. I am super, super excited today because we have such an amazing guest. He is a wildly successful serial entrepreneur. He's built 5 multimillion-dollar companies, including one which generated over $4 billion in revenue. He is a 2-time New York Times bestselling author. He has been featured in a whopping 8 movies, including The Secret and Quest for Success. With the Dalai Lama and Richard Branson. He's been on Anderson Cooper, Larry King Live, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. He is the CEO and founder of a company called NeuroGym, which focuses on brain retraining, and today he is considered one of the leading mindset and behavior experts in the world. John, welcome to the show.

It's so amazing to be with you.

I want to dive right in. You have this really, really cool story about, you know, I guess people see you right now as this really, really successful entrepreneur, and I don't think it was always that way. I'm under the impression that you got off to a little bit of a rough start. So kind of tell us about that.

Yeah, you know, a lot of people look at, you know, success you achieve, whether it's your physique, your finances, your businesses, your relationship, and A lot of people think that that's the way it always was, and you said it really well, that it wasn't always that way. I grew up in an average family, you know, parents didn't like each other, got divorced because they were young and wanted to have a family. Mother was a seamstress, father was a cab driver, gambler, not enough money at the end of every month or every week. Didn't do well in school, left when I was 17, grade 11, and got into a lot of trouble with the law, got into a lot of trouble selling drugs, getting caught, being high, and doing illegal things to put a few extra dollars in my pocket because I didn't think I was smart enough to have a job or a career that would help me, you know, live a decent lifestyle. So as I was approaching my 18th birthday, I knew that the consequences of my behaviors were going to become much more prevalent inasmuch as I wasn't a juvenile anymore. And once you're 18, and I was raised most of my life in Montreal, you're considered an adult and then you have to pay for your deeds as an adult. And, and so I didn't know what I was going to do. I was making about $2.65 an hour working in a computer company, packing boxes in the shipping department, and I hated every day of my life. And I went to visit my brother in Toronto, Canada, which is about 350 miles away from Montreal. I took the train to see him, and he said he arranged for a lunch for me with one of his clients who was a very successful entrepreneur in real estate. And I said, "Sure, yeah, I'll go meet him. Be fun to meet somebody successful." And that day my life changed. For whatever reason, I don't know why, but this gentleman, his name is Alan Brown, he just took a liking to me. Maybe because I was, I don't know, just a kid. And he just took a liking to me and he started asking me a whole bunch of questions about life and about goals and about what I wanted to achieve and why was I getting into trouble and why, you know, why did I not think that I was good enough or smart enough. And he was really genuinely interested, you know, so he really, he really— there's just this thing about him that cared and you felt it. It was— there was no reason for him to be at lunch, there was no benefit to him He was doing my brother a favor because I was getting in trouble. My brother asked him if he would at least talk to me. And he asked me a whole bunch of questions that nobody had ever asked me. But nobody ever showed me that there is more than what I had. And nobody ever showed me that I could be more than I was.

Right.

Nobody ever even talked to me about it other than saying, well, you know, why are you getting in trouble? I said, I don't know. Well, you should know better. I said, I know. Why are you doing it? I don't know. And that was the end of most of my discussions with adults who wanted to help me.

Right.

They were at a loss. And this guy, you know, and I shared this one story, or this part of the story of this one question he asked me, you know, and one answer that I gave him changed my life. One question, one answer changed my life. And it wasn't until he asked me to write down— he had these goal-setting documents. Yeah, I had no idea that people wrote down goals. I didn't even know that people had, you know, goals other than what they're gonna do that weekend or that evening. Yeah, but he asked me, you know, how much money would you like to make? And at the time, my father was making $25,000 a year. And I said to him, well, I'd like to make at least as much as my father. And he says, well, you can make $25,000 in a day if you set your mind to it.

Yeah.

I'm like, really? And he asked me, what age do I want to retire? And where do I want to travel? What kind of car do I want to drive? And what kind of home do I want to live in? And what kind of charities do I want to help? And what what kind of a difference I want to make in this world. And I had no idea, but he gave me these documents to fill out, to write out specifically. And he basically said to me, he said, listen, if you could write out what you want, I know how to achieve it, but you can't achieve anything until you know exactly what you want.

I love that.

So I took some time. He and my brother talked and I just, you know, wrote down shit. I wrote down I want to retire at 45 with $3 million. I was, you know, 19 at the time. Yeah. It's 26 years later, you know, $3 million, 26. I wanted to have a Mercedes-Benz. I wanted to have a house. I wanted to retire my mother and father, you know, so they wouldn't have to worry. I wrote down all this stuff for, you know, how much did I want to weigh, how much body fat percentage I wanted, what kind of travel I wanted to, and all this stuff for health, for wealth, what kind of relationships I wanted, what kind of career I wanted, what kind of business I wanted, if any. And he just had me write out stuff. And most of my ideas came from watching a TV show at the time when I was— I'm 58 now, this was 19, so, you know, 41 years ago. There was a show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, which still plays on TV today with Robin Leach, who died and it was just people living a great lifestyle. I said, I want that. Yeah, I want that. That's what I want.

If you want to download your very own goal-setting documents so that you can get clear on exactly what you want in terms of your wealth, health, relationships, career, finances, etc., simply go to 21daysofchallenge.com/goal-setting-documents. Documents. Here you'll be able to enter your name and of course your email, and when you hit the green button, you will get access to your very own goal-setting documents.

And he said, great, you can have that. And I said, no fucking way, I have no idea how to have that. And he says, well, you don't have to know how to have it when you set the goal.

I love that too. You don't have to know how.

Not initially, right? You don't know, you don't have to know how when you set the goal. And so after I wrote all this stuff down, he asked me the one question. And the one question was, you know, are you interested in achieving these goals in this lifestyle or are you committed? And at 19, I had no idea what the difference was. So I asked him, I said, Mr. Brown, what's the difference? He says, well, if you're interested, you'll come up with stories and excuses and reasons why you can't. If you're interested, you'll do what's easy and convenient. If you're interested, you'll wake up late and not do what is necessary to become the person who's able to live that type of lifestyle. He says, if you're interested, everything but what you need to do to live that lifestyle is the choices you will make. It says, but when you're committed, it says, do whatever it takes. It says you'll upgrade your knowledge, you'll upgrade your skills, you'll let go of your limiting beliefs and disempowering habits that are keeping you stuck doing the same things over and over again. You'll level up your self-esteem and your self-image so that you actually believe that you deserve it and can achieve it. 'And then you will constantly and never-ending improve your life until you achieve those goals.' Wow. That's what I said. I said, 'Wow.' I was like, 'This is, this is like real good shit,' right? And, and so I said, 'Well, in that case, I'm committed because I want that lifestyle,' right? And in that second, he took his hand out, he took took my hand in his, says, in that case, I will coach you and mentor you since you're committed.

Amazing, right?

And this was in a 2-hour lunch. Never met the man before, couldn't give a, you know, no idea, no need for him to help me. And, and then he did something else that, you know, started to, you know, put me on this path. So, great, I know you live in Montreal, I live here in Toronto, I have a real estate company I want you to move here and go get your real estate license. And I said, well, I don't have a place to live. I don't have any money to pay for my real estate license. He goes, well, that's the first stuff you have to figure out now, isn't it? So my brother said, well, you know, I can let him stay with me for a while. And I said, you know, I have a credit card with $1,000 limit on it. I think it's got like $700, you know, on it right now. I got $300, but let me see what I could do, right? So I went back to Montreal that weekend, told my parents I'm moving to Toronto to get into real estate, and they gave me some money to pay down my credit card, and I enrolled in the real estate class. $500. It was the beginning of May 1980, before you were born.

Yeah.

Right. And on June 20th, the class started and I hated the idea of going back to school. I fucking hated it because I hated school. Yeah. I didn't think I was smart enough, good enough.

Yeah. You had all these stories.

I had all— well, I had the evidence. I had more than the stories. Yeah. I had the D's and the F's and the failures and the cheating to get out of high school, which is another story. And But I said I was committed. And so on May 5th, I started my first day of real estate school. And on June 20th, 1980, I passed my test and got my certificate to become a— I was a licensed real estate agent. Every day from 9 to 5, I went to class, then studied at night, you know, to get ready for the test. And some people may be listening right now wondering, how the hell does he remember those dates? Well, it was the first time in many, many years I felt proud of myself because I passed a test that I didn't cheat on.

Yeah.

And that was the beginning of studying every single day to get better, right? And I have not stopped, nor will I.

Huh, that's amazing. So he basically had you write out exactly what you wanted, get super, super clear on that, start taking action toward that. But I'm under the impression too that he made you review that every day, did he not?

Yeah, the initial training was every day when I came into the office, I had to sit down and read my goals.

Right.

And I had to— well, I didn't have to, but he said, listen, I want you to review it every day. I want you to remind yourself every day what it is that you want to trade your life for.

Yeah.

And he said, it's not worth it for you to trade your life for something that isn't grand and big and spectacular. He says, so I want you to review it every day. So every day he would have me do 3 things. One is read it. Then I would read it and put my fingers across the words, because this was all handwritten, right? Didn't even have a computer back then, right? This was all handwritten. So run my fingers across, and he said every time you run your fingers across it, you're actually sending a signal, you know, from the paper to your fingers, through your nervous system to your brain. So now you're watching it Right? Because you're using your eyes to read. You're hearing yourself read. You're putting your fingers on it. And then he would have me close my eyes and pretend like a Hollywood actor that those things on the paper were true. And he gave me a little technique that I had no idea why he was doing it at the time, but now I understand a little bit more. Said, when you read it and a part of your brain says, that's not true, you're not earning this amount of money, you're not traveling first class, you're not doing these things that are on the paper, he said, just tell your brain, I know, and this is what I want you to help me focus on. So he acknowledged that there was a gap between where I was, broke, uneducated for the most part, no skills in real estate, no skills in anything. Yeah. Um, but he gave me this way to talk back to my brain, and it was something that he taught. He was taught that, you know, that self-talk is really, really important. So, you know, I would sit there and I would emotionalize, and I would get, you know, I would pay attention to my self-talk because there's a lot of negativity there. Yeah, that's not true. You're not making that much money. You can't achieve that. You're not smart enough. You're not good enough. You're not worthy. You're too young. Everybody else is so much older than you. All the stories, you know, that would just come up. He says they'll dissipate and go down. They'll take about 2-3 months, he said. Yeah, and it did. It started to dissipate, and then I started to achieve some results, right?

Right.

So I started to achieve some results, and, um, and then my self-confidence started to get a little bit better.

So you did this for, for 2 or 3 months every day?

Oh, I did it for, for years. Oh no, no, no. I started off for 2 or 3 months just doing it that way, right? You know, that was his way of doing it. Then I started to— I recorded it all. Then I would listen to myself driving all day. When I was driving around looking at homes, I would listen to cassette tapes of what I recorded about what you wanted and what you were doing. I would listen to it when I woke up in the morning. I would have it plastered on my mirror in my bathroom. I would listen to it, you know, while I was exercising. Oh, I was, you know, the reason I started NeuroGym, my company today, is really because of what I learned, you know, 40-plus years ago about programming your brain and priming your brain.

Yeah.

With what it is that you want, because if you can get that information into your brain, it'll help you figure out how to achieve it.

Amazing. And so you, when you first started this, you said you thought it was crazy. Like you thought it was, you know, you're having all these thoughts come up like, oh, that's not true. Like, why did you keep doing it?

Because somebody who was living the lifestyle I wanted said it worked. If he would have told me, you know, squeeze lemons on your head and spin around 3 times to the left, 3 times to the right, and that's gonna make you successful.

Yeah.

I would have done that too. Yeah. So I finally met some— it's not even finally, um, as I wasn't even looking before, but I met somebody who was happy, healthy, wealthy, generous. Yeah. Kind, philanthropic. It's like, he's got the life I want. So if he's sharing with me this stuff works That's like, it's almost like going to a, you know, a heart surgeon and questioning why does the heart surgeon say I should do this to make my heart healthier, right? They're, they're the expert. That's why you go to a doctor. That's why you go to a heart surgeon. And so he was willing to invest in me, and so I wanted to follow through. I said I was committed, right? And despite my own negativity and negative self-talk and, you know, self-image that wasn't great at the time. His solution offered me a hell of a lot more hope than mine did, right? Gotcha. And there's one other thing. There's actually one other thing. Interestingly enough, you just reminded me of something. I haven't shared this story too much. There was a guy who worked in the office that was probably in his late 20s, maybe early 30s. I don't recall. I won't mention who he is now in case he's still alive. This guy, um, was not, um, a very, uh, fluent individual in his language patterns. He could hardly speak English properly. Um, buck teeth. Dressed almost the exact same clothes every day. He had the same Harris tweed jacket every freaking day he came to work. And back in 1980, this guy who had followed what Alan had suggested made $150,000, right? And so when I saw this guy in my office on the phones doing this pattern, just of training their brain first and then practicing the scripting that we were taught, I'm like, holy shit, if it works for him, I'm gonna make a freaking fortune. Yeah. So I had a really good example of it working as well. So other than Alan, I had somebody who was polar opposite to Alan that I thought— I thought I was more capable, right, than this person. This person had an unbelievable work ethic. Yeah, like unbelievable work ethic. If I'd make 50 calls in a day, this guy do 100. If I did 100, he'd do 200. If I do 200, he'd stay all night long to do more than anybody else. And he spent time learning the skills, right? Every day he learned the, the what to say, what to say. You know, we all— we did back then was cold call. We're just calling people on, you know, random houses. No, no leads, no, no, you know, warm leads. This is like, hi, this is John Asraf with Allen Brown Real Estate Company. We have somebody looking to buy a home in the neighborhood. Are you interested in making a move? Now, what I just recited to you is 41 or 40 years old. I learned scripting every day I had to practice scripts and then get on the call and practice on people, right? So I learned scripts, and I learned if people said this, I say that. If they say this, I said that. Was like a chess match. I learned how to play the game of prospecting and calling like a chess match.

Yeah.

And I was taught that. So first was mindset, right? Then was skill set.

Right.

Gotcha.

Yeah, so you had, um, I guess you could see, you could see that this was working for Alan, and you could see that this was working for people that you thought were maybe less capable than you were. Yeah. And, and you did this for, you know, even though you maybe didn't believe like some of what you were like going over every morning about what your goals were and stuff, you just did this and did this and did this, and eventually you said you got results. What kind of results did you get?

In my first year on a 50/50 split, I made $31,000 back in 1980, right? And that was $5,000 or $6,000 more than my father at 19. And so, you know, at the time I was making, you know, $2,000 a month. You know, apartments back then were like, you know, $300 for a month. Just to give you an idea, right? And so I had money in my pocket, ethically, professionally. I had started to build my self-esteem and self-worth. Maybe I can do something. And then I started to just dive even more. It took me, you know, 3 to 4 months to understand a little bit about the real estate industry. It took me a few months to, you know, remember the scripts so I wouldn't have to read it, you know, off a piece of paper and then look for the answer to the next question. But then, you know, months 6 through 12, I started to take off. I just started to do like, let's go. I knew it was a numbers game, right? And, and when you're cold calling, you have to learn how to frame failure the right way, right? And so as opposed to, I'm a failure, you know, that person didn't want what we had to offer. Right. So I learned, you know, I learned proper, you know, mindset training techniques. And then the second year I made $151,000.

Which is crazy back then.

I bought my first house, bought my first Cadillac, bought, you know, clothes, I traveled, I was like—

At like 21, right?

Died and went to heaven.

Yeah.

Yeah, and my parents actually thought like, what are you doing that's illegal? Right. They have no idea how I went from, you know, $31,000, which they could understand, but they still thought something was fishy, right, to $151,000. And my career started to take off. And, you know, the more, you know, the more I learned and implemented, the more I earned, which then caused me to want to learn more. Right? So I got very, very excited about doing well and learning more. And that was the beginning of my career, you know, at 19.

Man, I love that story because I feel like it just illustrates to people how if you just get clear on what you want, you know, if you, I mean, like you went through every area of your life, like spirituality and relationships and health and all this stuff. And you wrote it down, you know, that's a key, key, key step.

It was really, really, really weird. It's really hard to write down, "I want that," right, when there's another part of your brain that goes, "But you're not smart enough to have that. You're not good enough to have that. You don't have the skills to do that," right, right? So it's, it's really, really weird and If you're willing to understand why you have those thoughts or beliefs and realize it's normal.

Yeah.

And then if you're given some techniques or some tools, when that happens, do this, right? So it's no different, you know, if you're, if you're learning how to bake, right? If you don't know what the hell you're doing, you're going to make mistakes. It's not, it's going to be messy and it's not going to turn out great.. But if you have an expert teaching you, hey, when, when you're cutting, instead of this way, do it this way, or that's gonna happen, you go, okay, I can do that. So specialized knowledge really has the ability to transform you. Mm-hmm. And the, the thing that I love about the era that we're in right now, we're in 2019, 2020, we're in this era now, and and all the how-to we know, right? There are people who are 19 making $1 million or more. There's people who are 80 who don't. So it has nothing to do with age, right? Right. There's people who are healthy today. There's people who are not. There's people who lose weight and keep it off, and people who lose weight and gain it back. There's people— every how-to that every single person listening right now wants, the blueprint already exists. So that's the easiest part of the equation, right? Right.

So the blueprint, in a sense, would be their expert, kind of.

Well, the blueprint could be their expert and their coach, their expert, you know. The blueprint could be the book. The blueprint could be the coaching program, the audio cassettes. The blueprint could be you know, a program that they buy on, you know, any of the courses that are available. But the how-to— like, if we decided right now, let's put, you know, rocket ship on Mars, the how-to exists already, right? Right. So there's not many people that are listening to this right now wondering how can we put a rocket ship on Mars. But if there was, right, well, you can find the blueprint. Mm-hmm. How much does it cost? Where to get everything? How many people you need? How much fuel do you need? What is the physics of it? All of the how-to exists. So for health, wealth, relationships, career, business, money, earning, managing, investing, protecting, building a business, scaling a business, hiring, all the stuff that anybody wants right now has already been done. Now, if you're an innovator, If you're a, you know, Steve Jobs, if you're an Elon Musk, if you're, if you're somebody who's like, you know, really, really out there with new innovations, great. Now, now you're a little bit different. But 99.999% of the population is not that.

So this brings me to a question then, you know, if all that stuff's out there, what do you think's holding people back? What do you think's in people's way? Why aren't they getting where they want to go?

Number one, because they haven't committed to an outcome. That's— I'm going to start right there. They'd like to, maybe it could be fun, it'd be nice, but they haven't committed to it. As soon as you commit to something, the universe starts to conspire in your favor. But as soon as you're like humming, hawing, maybe, kind of, sort of, there's no reason for the universe to do anything. So that's number one, is commitment number one. Number 2 is self-image. A lot of people say, "I would like to achieve that, but maybe I'm not worthy of that. It's just too far out there." And they don't have the skill or the knowledge of what to do when they meet up with a self-esteem or self-worth issue. Or if they have a goal or a vision and they have a limiting belief. But I'm too young, like I couldn't achieve that right now. And so now they have a limiting belief, I'm too young, I'm too old, I'm too Asian or Caucasian, I'm too this or too that, or not enough of this or not enough of that. And so now the limiting belief deactivates their motivation. And so they let go of that dream. And then the third one, and it's not gonna happen a lot with many of the people that'll be listening to this because of the age group, right? And that's fear. Fear of failure specifically, right? Usually when you're in your, you know, 20s, maybe even you're like, fear of failure, let's go! I've got, you know, I've got a lot of risk, you know, tolerance available. But fears— there's over 50 different types of fear that hold people back, and most of them don't even know. So if you're have this big goal and there's a chance that you might be embarrassed or ashamed or ridiculed if you fail, your motivational center is going to deactivate basically and you're not going to want to do it. Right. If you have a fear of failure or fear of success or fear of disappointing your boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, father, spouse, whatever, then your emotional the emotional side of your brain is going to actually not allow you to be as motivated and as you'd like to be or take action. So when we have fears or self-doubt, which is a precursor to fear, as a result of either self-esteem, self-worth, or lack of knowledge or skill, then we minimize what we think we can achieve. And so there are some people that naturally can overcome those things, and it's very, very, very few. And the majority of people are held hostage by them, and that's why they don't break free.

And, and how do you think people can— what can people do for these three, these three problems? You know, like the— I mean, the first one, they have to commit, right? And, and what can people do for these things to kind of overcome these and, and get on their way?

So there isn't a human alive that was born with a fear of failure. Right. Or a fear of being embarrassed or ashamed or ridiculed. So they had to learn that. There isn't a human being alive that was born with a predetermined self-esteem or self-image of themself or self-worth gauge. And there isn't a human being alive I was born with one belief, let alone limiting beliefs. Right. So all of it was learned. So all of the learned parts of this are patterns in people's brain. So the question you have to ask is, well, how did that pattern get developed? Mm-hmm. Right? So if there's a pattern, a neural network is what we call it, how did that pattern get developed? So it got developed by what my parents said, what my teacher said, what my environment was like, the people that I hung around with, my friends and their parents, and etc. So we, we got this information that was also backed by the experience of that information because we were in the environment, okay, of that information. And when our brains are developing from, from birth to about 7 years old, We go through something called the imprinting years and then the modeling years, and then we go into the socialization years that reinforce all the modeling that we've learned from our parents and our experiences. And so we develop these patterns. By the time we're 10, 12, 15 years old, those patterns are locked and loaded, right? And now we're in the reinforcement years, and 15, 17, 20, 22, 25. And so you ask yourself, well If words, you know, help me create these patterns, if images help me create these patterns, why not choose words and create my own patterns? Why not choose sentences that create my own patterns? Why not choose belief? A belief is nothing more than a pattern in the brain. And I have empowering ones and disempowering ones. I have constructive ones and destructive ones. Why not deactivate the destructive ones And why not create some new constructive ones? If a belief is nothing more than, you know, words in the brain, associations in the brain, is there a way that I could, through affirmations, visualization, meditation, mindfulness, subliminal programming, get the patterns that I want into my brain? And the answer is yes, you can. And if I go back now, you know, to when I was 19 years old In addition, right, to having my goals and my vision, yeah, I also had affirmations that I read every day, right, right. And the best— the way that I learned how to read and write affirmations is, I'm so happy and grateful for the fact that I am now— and then fill in the blank— I am now earning $100,000 a year, I am now building the company of my dreams, I am now healthy, happy, smart, and and blah. I am now so happy and grateful for the fact that, and so that I am, that I am, right? And why do you use that language pattern is because your brain, especially the subconscious mind, doesn't know the difference between something real or imagined, right? So if you take a positive affirmation, even if it's a lie right now, and you repeat it, emotionalize it, and then do your very best— now, how would I behave if I did have this? And then fake it until you feel it and you make it, right? And so if you think about— I'll give you a great visual. Let's imagine for just a moment, and everybody who's listening, pay, pay, play along. Let's say somebody taps you on the shoulder right now and says, hey Morgan, I'm a Hollywood producer and I have this script in my hand that Steven Spielberg wrote. And I think that you, with a little bit of coaching and acting lessons, you could play this role. If you're interested, I'll give you the coaching, I'll give you all the tools and resources that you need. If you play this role, I'll pay you $10 million.

Yeah.

Right? So you see where I'm going with this? Yeah. So what would be the first thing that you do? Let's say you looked at it and you liked it. You like the role. So the role, you've never seen it before, but you looked at it, you liked it. And it's a, it's a, it's a, of a young lady or even an old lady. You have to wear makeup. You'd have to hunch a little bit. Like even if it was a character you're not even used to, what would you do to be that character so that you would get that $10 million payday?

You start reading it. You start trying.

Like one time?

Well, over and over.

Like how many?

As many as it took.

As many as it took until you didn't need the script anymore to read the paper.

Yeah.

Or the computer. And then you would you practice the accent if there was one? Would you practice the cadence of the words if it was slower or faster? Would you practice how a woman the age of the character in the script looked and acted and walked and talked? Would you practice? $10 million is on the line. Filming is in a year. A year. We're going to give you a year to get good at that script. Could you do it?

I could do it.

You could do it. So if what it would take would be to practice, drill, rehearse, research the role, practice some more until you became the role, right? So what I just heard you say in the mm-hmm is you could take something that's on a piece of paper that's a script from Hollywood, and you could practice it enough for you to believe it enough to become that role so that you could be filmed on, you know, video and maybe even win an Academy Award for pretending to be that role, right? Great. So for everyone who's listening right now, you will achieve the goals that you want when you become the role, when you believe it, when you feel it, when you act that way, when you talk that way, when you do the things necessary to achieve those goals. And that takes practice and drilling and rehearsing and fucking up so many times you want to quit over and over and over and over again. Because when you're transforming from what you are to what you're going to be, it's freaking uncomfortable. And unless you're prepared to pay the switch cost from the norm now, the metamorphosis— if you look at what a caterpillar goes through to become, you know, from the caterpillar to chrysalis to a butterfly— if you're not prepared to go through that uncomfortable, goopy, awful state in between, you will never succeed, right? And herein lies why you must be committed.

Interesting. So they need to—

I like this topic. Yeah.

So they need to, they need to get clear on what they want, right?

Start off with that.

And they need to go, they need to go over that and over that and over that and keep that in their focus.

And then what do you need to believe?

And then start—

what do you need to believe? What do you need to believe? What, what? Yeah, what do you need to believe about yourself? What do you need to believe? What's possible? Right. What emotions do you need to learn how to manage? Mm-hmm. Is it the emotion of self-doubt? Is it, is it the negative self-talk in your head that you need to get better at? Is it the beliefs that, like, you're not good enough, not smart enough, not worthy, too young? Like, what beliefs do you need to let go of? What beliefs do you need to create? What habits do you need to develop? Mm-hmm, interesting, right? So all success has clues and also is about pattern recognition, right? Right, but pattern recognition. And so first you gotta learn— need to learn the pattern, the mindset pattern, the emotional pattern, and the behavioral pattern.

The The behavioral pattern. I'm real curious about that one because I think when you're in The Secret, you talk about— they talk very heavy law of attraction, right? But you mentioned the law of Goya.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So tell us about that.

The Secret was a wonderful movie to activate people's imagination that all you have to do is think, believe, and you'll achieve, right? Now, a portion of that is true because if you believe then chances are you're gonna take action. But a lot of people in the movie The Secret thought, you know, some kind of magical potion, you know, that all of a sudden, boom, snap your fingers and, you know, you're gonna be skinny and healthy and happy and wealthy. And that's bullshit. I learned the Law of Goya was the get-off-your-ass law. But not only get off your ass, right? There's a lot of people who are busy, but they're not busy doing the right things. Things, right? So you got to make sure that if you're going to climb a mountain, you, you better be climbing the right mountain. And yeah, the visual that I got when I was younger was, you know, if, uh, if what you want is in a safe, let's say the safe is locked, um, you can spend a billion years and not open that safe unless you have the skill to be a safe opener. But if somebody gave you the combination to the safe. If you didn't have the combination in the right order, you could spend a million years trying 12, 16, 19, 24— no, 24, 12, 16. You could, you could try, you know, thousands of different combinations. It'll never work. So when you're going to do any work, why not make sure in advance that you're doing the right work that's going to give you a predictable result? And so again, I'll give you a visual. Most people don't build a home without plans, right? Right. So they usually get an architect, they get somebody to help them, and they get a contractor, and then the contractor works with the subcontractors. Unless you're skilled at, you know, designing a house, you know, cutting it, building it yourself, which some people are, but most people are not. You start off with a blueprint. You start off with a plan of here's what we need to do. So we start with the goal of what it looks like, as much detail, and then say, great, like, what, what do we need to do first? Like, what do we need to do first? You need to do the first things first, and the second things second, and the third things third, right? If you do the third thing first, you know, that would be like if you do any baking. My wife and I like to bake, you know, if you put the ingredients, you know, in the wrong order, it doesn't work. In baking, it doesn't work. The cake doesn't come out the same way, right? And so in health, wealth, relationships, career, business, there is a way to do things that is the right syntax, right? And This goes back to, you know, where we started a little bit earlier is you've got to learn the skills that you need. And the good news is, is all that we know. That's what I said before. How to is the easiest part of the equation, right? So that's the easy part is figuring out the key is to get yourself to actually develop the habits to do it right consistently every day and then to manage your mindset and your emotions. Right, right. Because whenever you're going to start off with anything, you're going to be a clumsy beginner. Just about anything. You might be talented in some things, but not in everything. Yeah. And so you're going to be a clumsy beginner, and you have to go from a clumsy beginner, um, you know, to grade school, you know, to high school, to university, to the pros, to the All-Star team, to the Hall of Fame. There's different levels that you can practice to get to, and that just takes time, and that takes patience. And a lot of people don't have time and patience, right? And that's, that's a skill set that you have to develop. Mm-hmm. It's no differently than, you know, if you want to plant a flower, a seed for a flower, I'm sure you can offer it some fertilizer to make it grow a little bit faster, but but there's a period of time that it has to develop some roots, right, before it develops shoots. And if you're not prepared to go through the learning phase, the practice phase, the experimental stage to develop some skill and some expertise, okay, somebody else will be. Right. And they'll get the results and you won't. It's— I'll give you a perfect example. The Rubik's Cube, right? There are kids who solve the Rubik's Cube blindfold behind their back in less than 30 seconds. And the average person cannot solve the Rubik's Cube.

I don't think I can solve the Rubik's Cube.

But what if I said to you that if you commit to solving the Rubik's Cube, you can actually solve it in less than an hour? All you need to do is go to YouTube and follow a step-by-step 7-year-old Right. Okay, that'll show you what to put where. And if you just follow what she does, a 7-year-old will teach you how to do it, right? Yeah. And not just a 2x2, the 3x3, the 4x4, the 5x5, or the 6x6, or 8x8, or 16x16, which they have now. So if you really wanted to learn the Rubik's Cube, the Rubik's Cube is all about pattern recognition. But if you don't take the time to learn what are the patterns of which, which colors do I need to get to the top left or top right corner first? That's step 1. And then here's step 2, and here's step 3, and here's step 4, and how to do it. You'll forever be trying to move the Rubik's Cube, and it's got billions of combinations or possibilities. But solving every Rubik's Cube, somebody's already done, right? Right. Um, so much so that there's, you know, there's kids now that, um, that'll juggle 3 or 4 Rubik's Cubes and solve them while they're juggling it because they understand the pattern so well. Now they've added another element of difficulty, okay, because the rest is boring for them, right? So the pattern is all you need to learn.

Yeah, interesting. So, and, and that's a, like, kind of back to what you said where a lot of this info is out there, and I think a lot of people listening to this show, like they might be in something or in some kind of business where the how is definitely there. Like, they might be an Arbonne consultant, right? And they've got— like, the how is there, right? Or just, just kind of stuff like that. But I think the thing that they're really missing is, is like you said, the motivation, right? Like, you, you have to have the motivation to go do that. And do you think something that really helps people with that motivation is back to kind of what you did, where you got super, super clear on what you wanted and you focused on it every day and you never let that why kind of like and what you wanted slip out of your sphere of awareness? Do you think that would kind of help people in being consistent enough and being patient enough to actually look things up and go through the how and find the how?

Yeah, I think for me I had both a carrot and a stick as my motivators, right? So for me, the stick, right, was if I didn't do well at this, chances are I'd probably start doing things that were easy for me, which was, you know, be a hoodlum on the streets, and I'd probably be in jail or the morgue. And so I didn't want to do that. So I was like, I always kept my, my focus on the rearview mirror of, no, I don't want to go back there. So that was one motive.

She almost had like a painful motivation.

Yeah, I like, I like using both. So painful motivation, that was one of them. And then the motivation of achieving the goals that I wanted, that was exciting.

Right.

To think about, you know, taking care of my parents and having some money and traveling and seeing the world and doing something with my life, that was really motivating for me. That was, it was all selfish at the time. Right. It was all about me. My motivation was me. You know, my why was so I can frickin' take care of me so I could live a great life. So I, I, I, I, I, right?

Which has obviously changed.

But well, at the time I was 19, right? Yeah, 19 is— I is like, I want more money for partying at night. I want more money for a car. I want more money for clothes. I want more for me, me, me, me, me. And, you know, charity for me, you know, I remember, you know, when I filled out my goals for charity, it's like all I remembered back then was, well, charity begins at home. Take care of me.

Right.

That was charity. Me is charity. My mother and father and sister, but that was, you know, but like to give to a cause, that wasn't even in my consciousness at the time. A cause? I was the cause.

Yeah.

At the time.

Yeah.

I evolved hopefully a little bit since then, but it started off very me-centric, and that's okay. My why was me. And And so I had my carrot and my stick. And then, you know, you evolve and you grow, hopefully. And so you just have to have enough of a reason to be willing to look at yourself, like, what's really holding me back? Like, what's really holding me? It's good. It's only gonna be one of four things that I mentioned before: self-image, self-esteem, fears, limiting beliefs, or lack of knowledge and skills. Right. It's only one of those four things. It's not eight. It's one of those four things. And in some cases, all four of those things. Okay, so let's say it's all four. Well, when would now be a good time to get off of that and start moving in the direction of where you want to be so you eliminate those problems?

Right.

Right. So if you are the— if you are the problem within you, then, you know, you can stay stuck and be a victim of it. Or you can say, no, I want to be victorious over these things. I want to master my mindset better. I want to manage my emotions better. I want to feel more confident. I want to let go of limiting beliefs. I want to upgrade my knowledge and skills so that I have the talent to do what is necessary. I want to become the person who has strong empowering habits that move me towards my goals versus somebody who's got disempowering habits that take away my life. And the thing to remember is you're always at choice, right? You're always at choice. You can choose, yes, I'm going to do this, or no, I'm not. Or yes, I'm going to fail and stay down, or I don't care how many freaking times I fail, I'm getting up. I'll figure it out. I'll find out where did I make a mistake, what can I do better the next time, right? And, and, and here's the good news: I'm gonna come back to it one more time. How to do that, we know.

Yeah.

So the most important part is getting yourself to actually do it.

What do you, what do you think about morning routines to develop some of those habits?

I think they're imperative. So, you know, after you've, you know, been asleep and hopefully you're well rested and your cortisol levels are high in the morning, you know, and you get up and you start your daily routine with maybe some gratitude exercises to activate the dopamine in your brain, the feel-good chemicals, and maybe you share a little love with a friend or a spouse or a girlfriend or boyfriend. You release that oxytocin and serotonin's released. And then you look at your goals and some adrenaline kicks in and you do a little morning meditation. You review your goal and you prime your brain, you know, and you have a healthy breakfast. Yeah, you do all that before, you know, 7:30. And trust me, that's a habit and a ritual that will change your life. And then if you, at the end of the day, you know, review, what am I grateful for today? What did I do well? What can I learn from that? And without any judgment, shame, blame, or guilt, just awareness. Say, tomorrow my goal is to get better. I'm gonna keep learning every single day. I'm gonna have my opening ritual, my close of the day ritual, and then I'm gonna, you know, ask my brain while I'm sleeping to, you know what, help organize everything everything that I've learned today, you know, help cement the goals that I want to achieve a little bit more. And I believe that you can talk to your subconscious mind and give it instruction. And so at nighttime, say, hey, come up with, you know, anything that I'm gonna need for tomorrow to make tomorrow better than today. Mm-hmm. You can't go wrong with empowering rituals. If you ask the average person, What are your empowering rituals? Most people go, what do you mean? But most highly successful people, they'll tell you exactly what their empowering rituals are. If you take a look at athletes, okay, almost every athlete, you know, has a little ritual before they play whatever they're playing.

Right.

Right, the way they spin the ball, the way they, you know, do a move, they have rituals. To create these patterns of success. So what are some patterns of success that you can create? Can you start reading 5 minutes every morning, 5 minutes every night, 3, 4 paragraphs? That's an empowering ritual. Can you start listening or watching to a podcast, you know, once a day for 20 minutes? You don't have to watch a whole one. Watch Have fun for 20 minutes. Watch a TED Talk, listen to a podcast on your way to work. Turn off the radio, turn off the TV. Read something, read something that inspires you, that educates you, that lifts you up, that causes you to be curious, that causes you to develop yourself. Read something to upgrade your knowledge and your skills so you're more well-rounded in the area that you may need the most help in.

That how piece.

Yeah, so you can spend, you know, 20 hours a day if you wanted to on YouTube just watching killer stuff. Mm-hmm. Right? So instead of, you know, being at the bars, instead of doing stuff that is gonna pretty much waste your time, invest 1 hour a day towards your rituals and personal development. 1 hour a day is 9 40-hour weeks in a year. So let's say I invested 1 hour a day to upgrade my knowledge and skills. Let's say that was a ritual that I had every day and you didn't. At the end of the first year, I'd have 9 40-hour weeks of more training than you.

Wow, that's crazy, right?

Yeah. So listen, if you and I decided today, let's start knitting, we know nothing about knitting, right? Or painting, you know nothing about painting, and we practice for 9 40-hour weeks. We'd be good at something.

That's right.

Now let's do that for 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. An hour a day. So one person, you know, goes from A to B, and in the same 24 hours that another person who practices for an hour a day or develops these positive rituals, they go from A to Z. Mm-hmm. So that's how successful people operate. It's the law of compounding effort.

Yeah, right, that consistency that you talked about.

And so you may not start with an hour, start with 10 minutes. Mm-hmm. Okay, so it's not gonna be 9 40-hour weeks, you know, but 10 minutes is still a lot more.

Still one 40-hour week.

Yeah, so, so that's, that's, you know, the— that's the key. Right there. It doesn't have to be massive action, but it has to be consistent and it has to be the right stuff.

So do you have a morning routine? Does it have— yeah, reviewing your goals, does it have—

yeah. So my morning routine, um, and I don't care where I am in the world, I just got back from, you know, 3 days of Las Vegas, and my morning routine was the same and my evening routine was the same and my eating patterns the same and my workout patterns is the same. So my morning routine is wake up and pee, and then right to meditation. So right to a morning meditation, usually 15 minutes, 20 minutes morning meditation. I do a variety of different meditations and I do something called inner sizing, which is part of, you know, my new book, Inner Size. And so I inner size using some of our audio programs. And then after that, I go to my Exceptional Life Blueprints So it's a blueprint that I created for myself that all of my students get as well. And it's part of our Exceptional Life Coaching program. And I review all of my goals like I did 41 years ago. Mm-hmm.

So you've done that like for the past—

I have done them. And so I've reviewed, I've made them, made the process way better. And I review them, I read them, I emotionalize them. I close my eyes, I see them. After I do that, which takes me about, 10 minutes, maybe 8 minutes. Um, I work out for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Um, 80% of the time I'm watching a podcast or listening to a book on audio or something to educate me myself while I'm, uh, while I'm doing that. And then, um, I have a smoothie that I make almost every morning, and I even travel with my smoothie concoction.

I think I've seen this smoothie concoction on Instagram.

And, um, and I I have my, my smoothie and then shower, shave, and then off to the office. Every day.

Every day.

Every day. Well, I don't— Saturday and Sunday I don't go to the office, but the morning routine is the same.

It's the same.

Yeah.

One thing that shocked me when I interviewed John for this podcast is how similar his morning routine is to my morning routine. And I actually created a 21-day challenge for people who want to start implementing their own empowering morning routine. So it's got habits in there like gratitude, setting and reviewing your goals daily, hydration, movement, eating a healthy breakfast, and learning. So if you want to join the Morning Routine Challenge, go to 21daysofchallenge.com. Here you'll find the Morning Routine Challenge, and if you scroll scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll find this big orange button which you can click to join the waitlist. You will be the first to be notified when the challenge starts again.

So it's, um, oh, cold shower too. So, so when I'm in the shower, I do the hot shower and the cold shower. There's a whole body of work on hormesis now, and that is, you know, challenging your— anything from like mitochondria, whether it's a Hot, hot, hot sauna or cold, cold, cold water, you know, after you shower with hot water, you know, shocks the system into adaptation. And so, you know, I'll mix and match stuff all the time. So instead of brushing my teeth with my right hand, I'll brush with my left hand like I have for the last 100+ days. Instead of having the toilet paper roll face down, I'll have a toilet roll face the other way. Instead of brushing my hair with my right hand, I'll brush it with my left hand. Instead of shaving my right hand, I'll shave with my left hand. So I've got a daily ritual of doing something unique and different. Because it's uncomfortable doing something different, I want to train myself as many ways as possible to give myself a command, and even if it's uncomfortable, I do it.

Mm-hmm. And that cold shower sounds like it'd be pretty uncomfortable too. Like, that's almost a mindset piece in itself.

Oh, it'll blow your mind to some self-talk, you know, if it's hot out or cold out. But after you do it for about 100 days, it's kind of like, pfft, big deal.

Yeah, that's super cool. I love that you have the morning routine and that you've kept that, you know, for so long, and it's obviously working.

I'm too petrified to stop it.

Yeah, I love that. That's cool. Speaking of your book Innercise though, talk a little bit just maybe about your book Innercise and where people can find you.

So if people go to IgniteMyBrain.com, there's a webpage I created for there. And what I'm doing for people who buy the book now is I have 8 brain training audios specifically to give people the actual inner sizes that I guide them through for reducing stress, for reducing overwhelm, for letting go of fear, for getting focused, for gaining clarity. So I created these audio cassettes or audio tapes that people will download when they buy the book. It's like $11 on Amazon. And I want to teach them how to have more mental and emotional control. So if you think about exercise, like, why do we exercise? It doesn't matter if you walk or do a sit-up, it doesn't matter. Well, we know exercise strengthens your muscles, your ligaments, your joints. It's good for your cardiovascular system. It's great for your liver to help detox et cetera. So we know exercise is really good for our organs and our muscles. Well, we also know that there are mental and emotional techniques that we can use to gain more control and power of our brain. And since our brain's the most powerful tool in the known universe, it's an organism. Um, when was the last time you took any classes on how to use your brain better? Right? So it's the most powerful tool in the universe. You already own it. You can't remake it for $10 billion or $100 billion in, in a lab, and you don't have the user's manual for your own brain, right? So Innercise: The New Science to Unlock Your Brain's Hidden Power is taking all of the latest scientific research and studies, what we know about the brain.

And that's your book, right?

And that's the book. And, and so not only do I tell people, here's what you should do, here's how to use this part of your brain better, that part of your brain better, how to do this, how to heat these two work better together. Here are the actual inner sizes that I guide you to do with me in the audios. And, and so imagine having more mental control. Imagine having more emotional control. Imagine knowing and having techniques to eliminate stress from your life. Imagine if you feel self-doubt or fear or uncertain you recognize that emotion and then you have a tool of what am I going to do about it so I don't get sucked into this disempowering, possibly negative emotion or feeling. And so even when we get into talking about emotions and feelings, they're two different things. One happens as a result of programming in the subconscious level, and the other one happens as a result of neurochemicals that are released into the bloodstream. Right, most people like, what? Well, you have emotions, right? So you're not your emotions, but you have them, and you have feelings, right? Well, why are they controlling you? They're yours. So why are you allowing them to control you? And the answer is because I don't know how to not let them control me because I've never practiced them. I've never been taught what they are. Mm-hmm. Okay, great. So you're ignorant, right? And so ignorance just means not knowing. Well, let's open open up your awareness, right? We know what emotions are. There aren't 600 emotions. There's 6 core emotions. There aren't 800 feelings. There's like 20 core ones. And so why not learn what they are? It's like your cell phone. Most people are like, I use it to get email and to text. Well, but it does so much more than that, right? So our brain is a very underutilized tool. And if you want to achieve your goals, why not learn to use your brain better? Because that's where your goals are created and/or achieved or not.

Right.

And that's why I wrote Innercise.

Cool. So they can go check that out. And then what about if they want to follow you on, on Facebook or Instagram?

Sure. So every Tuesday I've been doing doing trainings on my Facebook fan page, so it's @JonAsraf. I post on Instagram every day, once or twice a day as well. I've got a YouTube channel as well where I post a lot of free stuff, and then we have a lot of programs as well. You know, once people see some of my free stuff, read my material, a lot of them want to go deeper into the work that I do, especially on retraining their brains. And, and so follow me on all social media. I tweet, I I Insta, I Facebook, all the stuff. YouTube. We do it all.

Awesome. So for anyone who's interested in that and checking out his book and checking out what he's doing on Instagram, on Facebook, I will put all those links in the show notes. And it's been a fantastic podcast and I thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks for coming so well prepared. It was actually wonderful that you knew some of the stuff and you came prepared. So thank you, Morgan.

Awesome.